Perhaps I’m overstating the danger a bit, but the point remains: Americans need to raise our sagging birth rates. One of the best ways we can do so is by reversing the trend of Americans waiting longer to get married. So, apart from tearing down America’s institutions of higher education, which tend to slow down the recitation of wedding vows, how do we do that? It’s quite simple. We tear down the Friend Zone.

Every year, countless young men find themselves trapped in the Friend Zone, a prison where women place any man they deem worthy of their time but not their hearts, men they’d love to have dinner with but, for whatever reason, don’t want to kiss goodnight.

Being caught in the Friend Zone is an inarguable drag on fertility rates, as a man who spends several years pledging his heart to a woman who will never have his children is also a man who most likely won’t procreate with anyone else during that time of incarceration. Free him to find a woman who actually wants to marry him, however, and he’ll have several more years to sire children who will laugh, create, sing, fill the world with love and, most importantly, pay into Social Security.

Quite simply, for the sake of our future, the Friend Zone must be destroyed. For the Friend Zone to be destroyed, women must accept the following truths: you don’t have any guy friends and, in fact, you can’t have any guy friends.

If He’s Spending Time Alone With You, He Wants a Date

By “friends,” I don’t mean acquaintances or chummy colleagues you only see at work, or friends of friends that you don’t get together with outside of a group setting, or what I call buffer-zone friends—people of the opposite sex you can be friends with because there is a significant other in between to take the romantic element out of the equation. Rather, by “friend” I mean someone you deliberately choose to spend one-on-one time with.

Likewise, I’m also asserting that a man can’t truly be your friend if he secretly wants to date you. Virtually every man who meets the one-on-one qualification does, in fact, want to date you. To understand why, it helps to look at things from an economic perspective.

Imagine that friendship is a good that people acquire in exchange for the currency of their time. The average man lives in a competitive friendship market where some forms of friendship appeal to him more than others and therefore get his business. What then, is the average man looking for in a friend? By and large, something along these lines:

Someone who shares his interest in activities such as watching movies where things explode, playing video games where things explode, or putting fireworks in things so they’ll explode. Bonus points if you enjoy yelling at football players through the television set and laughing at noxious flatulence.

Someone who won’t pressure him to open up beyond his comfort level if his girlfriend breaks up with him,he loses his job, or his mom gets eaten by a yeti.

Someone who cherishes the man tradition of showing affection through insults and general jackassery.

If you are a lady who believes your dude friends are genuinely “just friends,” ask yourself this: Which of these things are you better at giving a man than another man is?

The answer is clear. None of them. You are not especially good at liking “Karate Ninja 7: Exploding Hands of Fury,” or informing the offensive line of the Chicago Bears, via your Samsung, that they are all false starting idiots.

When a guy is comfortable within the borders of Emotional-Repression-ville, you’re not great at letting him stay there. When he makes you cough and hack by releasing Taco Bell-fueled hell gas in your general direction, you don’t respond by complimenting him on his notable wind-breaking abilities.

There’s Only One Thing You Can Give His Man Friends Can’t

If, then, the average male coworker, male neighbor, or male Nepalese yak herder is better at producing masculine companionship, why is an average man giving his business to you? It’s not because he wants your friendship. It’s because he wants to convince you to open up the supply chain of a romantic relationship to him, and he foolishly believes he can do so by being a loyal friendship customer. “Pay my dues in the Friend Zone,” he thinks, “and one day she’ll promote me to boyfriend.”

Just because men don’t want to be your friend, however, doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy your company. They most certainly do. They love discovering how you see the world, what you think about life, the universe, and everything. They love your kindness, thoughtfulness, sensitivity, support, and your nurturing heart. They love being in your presence when you display the wonders of the feminine virtues.

But because God designed these virtues to entice men into marriage, the average man will never be content to receive those gifts in a form of companionship that doesn’t lead to marriage. Quite simply, men can’t be at peace being just friends. And there’s nothing you can do to change that. Platonic chilling won’t stop your inner (and outer) beauty from pulling a man towards romantic love. Telling him he’s like a brother to you won’t stop his brain from shouting “Marry that woman and impregnate her now” when he encounters your femininity.

Repeat the “We’re just friends” mantra a thousand times. It won’t rewire the circuits of the male mind. All it will accomplish is deluding you into thinking he’s content to stay in the Friend Zone quicksand and deluding him into thinking he can break out of it by sinking even deeper.

Accept the truth, ladies. You don’t have any guy friends. You can’t have any guy friends. And because America can no longer afford to have its young adults waste their fertile years thinking otherwise, the time has come to tear down the Friend Zone and set free every man trapped within its confines.

Take a New Look at Your Best Man Friend

Consider your best guy friend. Are you attracted to him? Does he fill you with the biological desire to repopulate the earth? If not, then do your “friend” a solid and let him go. Call him up and tell him, “It’s not my fault that your facial symmetry grosses out my ovaries, but it was my fault that I got your hopes up by putting you in the Friend Zone. As restitution, please accept the phone numbers of five girls I know who find you attractive. Stop wasting your time with me and go hang out with a girl who might one day bear your children.”

So get brave. Get married.

Do this now. Don’t hesitate, thinking that you don’t want to lose him as a friend. The truth is, you’ve never had him as one.

Conversely, if you find your guy friend attractive, and if you see him as a man of character and heart, then call him right now and tell him that he was placed in the Friend Zone due to a clerical error. Say to him, “You make me laugh and would be a great husband and father. Clearly, you need to be on the express track to the Marriage Zone.”

Don’t worry that he’ll reject you. Just as the vast majority of mythological sailors didn’t want to crash their ships into the rocks when they pursued the beauty of the sirens’ song, he most certainly didn’t want to end up here when he began pursuing your song. Don’t worry that he was genuinely only in this for the friendship. Truth be told, you were never particularly good at offering him that in the first place. But you will be quite good at offering him what God designed you to give him—marital bliss.

So get brave. Get married. Get pregnant a bunch of times and give birth to a bunch of beautiful little future taxpayers. The time has come to fight for our future. The time has come to rebuild America’s demographic glory atop the rubble of the fertility-killing Friend Zone.

Hans Fiene is a Lutheran pastor in Illinois and the creator of Lutheran Satire, a series of comical videos intended to teach the Lutheran faith. Follow him on Twitter, @HansFiene.